Blind multi-model review: Opus 5 at Medium effort beats Opus 4.8 High
OHOLshoukanjuu · reddit · 2026-08-22
Amid widespread criticism of Opus 5, a non-coder user ran their Cross-Instance Review pipeline: multiple models independently draft from the same brief, then peer-review and vote via STAR (Score Then Automatic Runoff) to pick the base draft, used here to build v2 of their Research Synthesis skill.
Scores (max 30): Opus 5 Medium took first with a unanimous 30, beating Opus 4.8 High (25) 6–1 in the runoff; Fable 5 Medium (23) beat Fable 5 High (20); Opus 4.6 High came last at 8, with multiple seats citing concrete missing requirements.
Two counterintuitive findings: Fable's effort profile runs inverse (Medium beats High, a third independent observation — no case for paying High on Fable for build work); and Opus 4.6's weak precision instruction-following argues for dropping it from build seats. The author also found Sonnet 5 at Low effort beats Opus 5 for synthesizing multiple research reports, thanks to lower variance and cost.
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